Featured Book Review: Ancient Iranian Numismatics: In Memory of David Sellwood

Ancient Iranian Numismatics: In Memory of David Sellwood. Mostafa Faghfoury (editor). 238 + xxviii pages. UCI Jordan Center for Persian Studies (2020).


David Sellwood (1925-2012) is a name well-known to anyone interested in ancient Persian coins. He wrote two editions of "An Introduction to the Coinage of Parthia", which is still the standard reference for Parthian coins, as well as other works on Parthian and Sasanian numismatics. The current volume serves as a celebration of his life and work, as well as a convenient excuse to collect a number of new papers on ancient Iranian numismatics by various authors. After introductory sections giving a brief biography of David Sellwood, as well as memories and tributes from various colleagues and a complete bibliography of his numismatic publications, we reach the section of novel numismatic papers. There is one paper on Seleucid coins, four papers on Parthian coins and history, two papers on the history and coins of Persis, and four papers on Sasanian topics, as well as one paper on conventions for transcribing Greek coin inscriptions.

Before discussing the various papers, I want to mention that the book contains news on two forthcoming publications, both related to Parthian numismatics. One of the four "Parthian" papers is simply an announcement of the imminent publication of volume 2 of the Sylloge Nummorum Parthicorum, which will deal exclusively with the coinage of Mithradates II. The other news, while it includes few details, is that a revised third edition of Sellwood's catalogue is still promised. Here is the relevant section in full, from Dr. G.R.F. Assar's biography of Sellwood: "Up until his final days, David was involved in the revision of his An Introduction to the Coinage of Parthia in collaboration with me. He even wrote the 'Foreword to the Third Edition' on 11 May 2011 while waiting for some coins from his collection to be photographed at the offices of Spink's in London. Implementing the changes that he had approved I shall complete the project in his memory as a comprehensive volume on the political and numismatic history of Parthia." Make of that what you will.

Seleucid numismatics is covered only by one short paper by Simon Glenn and Keith Butter on some bronze coins from Bactria. The Parthian section, besides the announcement of SNP 2, has two papers by G.R.F. Assar and one by Mostafa Faghfoury. The first of Assar's papers has very little numismatic content and is concerned with establishing the exact date of the battle at the River Lycus between Antiochus VII and the Parthians. The article is very well researched and assembles data from diverse sources towards proving its thesis, but to be honest I found it a bit dry; perhaps only specialists will be much interested. The other article by Assar, however, is far more numismatically interesting and likely to be controversial. While the current consensus seems to be that the Parthians never struck gold coinage, Dr. Assar has long dissented, and in this article he argues for the authenticity of a unique gold coin of Mithradates III (c.87-80 BC). In this article too, he marshals evidence from many different areas, including engineering (Dr. Assar's degree is in engineering) to make his point. After reading this article, I feel that it is at least plausible that some Parthian gold coins were struck, even though they do not seem to have been issued in large quantities, and a couple of them may have survived to today. This paper was, for me, a highlight of the book. There is also a paper by Mostafa Faghfoury on Parthian bronze coins that offers a useful overview of the subject, and goes into detail on the differences between emissions from the various mints and the likely monetary standard of the series.

The two papers on Persis are both of high scholarly quality, but I don't think that either will be highly useful to most collectors. Khodadad Rezakhani's brief piece analyzing the names of rulers of Persis, while it draws heavily on numismatic data (as any work on Persis must), says very little about the coins themselves. Kiarash Gholami's paper on the Fratarakas (five early rulers of Persis) is heavily numismatic, but the coins of all these rulers are rather rare, and few collectors will own relevant specimens.

Two of the Sasanian papers, by Touraj Daryaee and Susan Tyler-Smith, deal with relatively limited numismatic topics (a very rare gold coin of Khusro I and a small group of Khusro II drachms that may be copies by later rulers, respectively). Both are interesting and solid papers, but not especially useful to most collectors. The other two articles, by Hodge Medhi Malek and Bahram Badiyi, can be considered as examples of how Sasanian mintmarks are identified to particular cities. Malek's article focuses on one mintmark, AM which is assigned to Amul in Tabaristan, and goes into detail on the history of the city and includes photos of 168 individual coins bearing that mintmark. Badiyi's article deals with the various cities (including mint cities) founded by the Sasanians, and includes a helpful map and several charts and photographic plates showing the various mintmarks. The final paper, by Edward C.D. Hopkins (creator of the invaluable parthia.com website) is an explanation of the Leiden conventions for transcribing Greek inscriptions, which were established by scholars in 1931, and includes helpful instructions on how to transcribe Greek into Unicode. While the rules are applicable to any coin with Greek inscriptions, the examples given are all of Parthian coins.

Overall, I found this book interesting, and worth the $60 I paid on Amazon. This is not an attribution guide of Parthian, Sasanian, or other Persian coinage, and would not be very helpful to beginners in the field or those with only a passing interest in the subject. But for those who already have access to the standard catalogues (Sellwood, Gobl, etc.) and are interested in gaining additional historical and numismatic information not contained in those books, this is a worthwhile volume, and I would recommend it. Of course, I'd like to hear from anyone else who has the book what you think of it.

 

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Thanks, @Parthicus, for the informative write-up, it sounds like an interesting collection of articles, and a Sellwood Third Edition would be on my shopping list.